A Better Path
by IndigoJones
Summary: After an unusual meeting of the criminal kind, Nikki Swango chooses a new path. Set between episodes 8 and 9 of Season 3, with spoilers for episode 10 in final chapter. Rated for language.
1. The Defiant Ones

1 - The Defiant Ones

The first hour of driving was reckless. The frame of the Volkswagen rattled around them as Nikki pushed the needle past 70, not caring much where the road took them so long as it was away from where they'd been. After a while the man in the passenger seat tapped one finger on the back of her hand and gestured for her to slow down. She eased her foot off the pedal and tried not to think about how slippery the floor was with her own blood. She didn't dare to look in the rearview mirror, too afraid of seeing the outline of a wolf back there chasing her. On they went for hours with the headlights cutting a low tunnel through the darkness and only the sound of a man breathing to keep her company. It was like nothing else in the world existed outside of the car and the beam of light. Eventually Nikki glanced down at the dials behind the wheel and felt her stomach lurch a bit.

"Looks like we don't have enough gas to go much further." A few moments of silence passed before she remembered that there wasn't going to be an answer. Nikki reached over and waved her hand next to the man's face until he looked at her. She met his eyes while tapping her fingernail over the gage and shaking her head. He jutted his chin in acknowledgement. She hoped he had a plan. About ten minutes later the man rapped his knuckles on the dash and pointed. She followed the direction of his finger and turned the car off the road onto a gravel lane that took them into the woods.

"I don't know about this, big fella," she muttered, careful not to move her mouth too much. Once they were well off the road he gestured for her to pull over. She coasted off the gravel and parked. The man reached over, killed the ignition and pocketed the key. By the time Nikki looked over to him he had already opened his door and was awkwardly unfolding himself out of the seat. Nikki stayed put. She did not trust her ability to walk any further, and she didn't particularly want to leave the relative safety of the car. It was a gift, after all. Her door opened and the man, either in a hurry or sensing her reluctance, grabbed her under the arm and hauled her out. As soon as she found her feet he started walking, and Nikki had to either walk along with him or be dragged.

They cut through the woods in a straight line, or as straight as two people who were exhausted, wounded, and limping could manage. Each grasped the other's sleeve in one hand, and the chains dangling from their wrists clattered together. _Like really sad sleigh bells_, Nikki thought. The man seemed to have regained some of his strength, but his breathing was loud and he sometimes pulled hard on her sleeve like he was using her arm to regain his balance. Nikki had lost track of the time, but it must have been the small hours of the night. The trees blocked most of the moonlight, and she found herself tripping over unseen roots and branches that the man seemed able to avoid. When the trees started to thin the man redirected them, and Nikki realized they were walking downhill. She had to keep her head down so as to maintain the little footing she had, and she didn't notice that the man had stopped until her head knocked clumsily against his shoulder. She looked up and saw a lake.

"We going swimming, mister?" It was sort of a joke, but she was also a little scared that it was true. The man didn't notice her question, or chose to ignore it. He was looking around, and Nikki wondered vaguely if he could see better than most since he couldn't hear at all. He pointed at something and then nodded at Nikki before pulling on her sleeve and striding out again. She followed, of course, but her legs started shaking and she grabbed onto his jacket with both hands. Almost without breaking stride the man stepped behind her and pressed one hand behind her shoulders, pushing her forward while balancing her with his other hand on her arm. On they went through the dark. _Maybe we will never stop_, Nikki mused with the delirium of the exhausted, _maybe we really did die and our punishment is to walk forever through a dark forest_. She laughed a little so that she wouldn't cry.

It was only a few minutes later that Nikki realized where they were going. It was a cabin, tucked back in the edge of the woods with a raised patio overlooking the lake. As they approached it the man swung Nikki around by her arms and pushed her down so she was sitting on the stairs to the patio. He put his face in front of hers, and when their eyes were locked he pointed at her and then tapped his ear and made a circular gesture. She nodded, and he patted her shoulders before crouching down and making his way around the corner of the cabin and disappearing from view. She tried to be as quiet and still as possible until he came back around the opposite corner. He raised his eyebrows at her and tapped his ear again. She shook her head, and he nodded. They grabbed each other's arms and slowly made their way up the stairs. At the top, the man braced himself and kicked once at the door, which gave way with a crunch. They waited another moment before walking in, then stood in the dark until Nikki spotted a table lamp and staggered away from the man to turn it on. In the dim light they could see that the cabin was one big room with a kitchenette in one corner and a bathroom in the other. An assortment of miss-matched chairs were scattered around. The only big pieces of furniture were the table by the kitchenette and a sofa in the middle of the room. It was all a little dusty. She looked back at the man who was shoving the door back into place. He grabbed the nearest chair and wedged it shut. She limped over to the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. It spluttered, and reddish brown water splashed out. She let it run clear before sticking her mouth under the stream. The man had followed her, and when she was done she hopped aside to let him drink. When he stood up again they looked at each other. Their faces were bloody and their mouths were wet. They were both pale and shaking with exhaustion, but they were alive and, for the moment, safe.

"I can't believe you got us here." Her voice was unsteady. It was all too strange. She'd been shot by an arrow, participated in a beheading, visited a bowling alley that maybe wasn't a bowling alley, met man who maybe wasn't a man, and fallen in with a deaf convict – clearly a killer – who had swooped in and protected her like a guardian angel for no reason she could guess. _An angel who decapitates people_. None of it made any sort of sense, but here they were. "I guess it's meant to be," she said out loud. Maybe she had just gone crazy.

The man shrugged.

"What next," she asked him. He held up one of his wrists and shook the chain.


	2. Orphans of the Storm

2 - Orphans of the Storm

It didn't take long to find the toolkit. It was under the kitchen sink, right next to a white plastic box with a red cross on it. They sat on the floor, the man examining the tools, and Nikki sorting through the contents of the first aid kit: band aids, Neosporin, tiny scissors, a roll of white tape, gauze pads, nasal spray, a bottle of iodine, and a few Tylenol and Claritin tablets individually wrapped in paper packets.

"Do these things expire," she muttered while tearing open the Tylenol, and then downed it anyway. She held up a second packet for the man to see. He shrugged one shoulder and held out an open palm.

"Yeah, I know you're tough," she sighed while ripping open the packet and dropping the tablet into his hand. She thought she might have seen one corner of his mouth quirk up just for a moment.

He made quick work of their handcuffs. Nikki had been expecting a trial and error process, but the man seemed to know exactly what to do, and after only a few jarring blows - and some irreparable dents in the floorboards - they were off. Nikki stayed seated for a minute before slowly getting to her feet, clutching the first aid kit to her chest. Once she was up she saw that the man had taken off his jacket and was examining the tear across its back. The corners of his mouth turned down like a miserable child's, and Nikki suddenly remembered the soft tickle of kitten fur under her chin. She was getting loopy. She set the kit down on the table and held out her hands to him, palms up. He looked at her and scowled a bit. She pointed at him and then mimed pulling her shirt over he head, pointed at the bathroom, and then opened her palms again. He nodded, and, after a moment of hesitation, put the jacket into her waiting hands. She folded it carefully and placed it on the table, and hung her own coat on the back of a chair before picking up the kit and following him. The bathroom was tiny, with just enough room for a tub along one wall and a toilet and sink against the other, and illuminated by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. On entering, she found the man shirtless and examining the red bruise around his wrist from the cuff. She hobbled over and set the kit on top of the sink before extracting and opening the bottle of iodine. She grabbed the fingers of the man's hand and pulled him towards her so it was over the basin before sloshing the brown liquid over his wrist where the first arrow had stuck him. He made a wordless noise in his throat and yanked his fingers out of her grasp.

"Well then you do it," she replied, holding out the bottle. He didn't take it, so she shrugged and opened a few packets of gauze pads and proceeded to pour iodine on them.

"Here," she said, handing one to the man and pointing at the wounds on his face and then to his reflection in the mirror. A look of confusion passed through his eyes, and he pointed at her leg.

"You first," she answered, poking him in the middle of the chest with her forefinger and then holding it up in front of his face. "Look, this was my party you crashed, big guy, so you first." She couldn't tell how much he understood of what she'd said, but he turned back to the mirror and started cleaning the wounds on his head. She took her own gauze around to his back and started treating the slice behind his shoulder. It sure wasn't pretty, but it wasn't all that deep either.

"Nothing some Neosporin won't clear up," she said as she reached around his side for the ointment and more gauze. She looked up and saw him watching her in the mirror, his face unreadable. She nodded and tried to smile encouragingly, then reached back again for the roll of tape, holding it up so he could see it. He nodded, and returned to treating the gash above his eye.

After she had taped him up as best she could manage, she scanned her eyes over his back in search of other injuries, but all she found were scars. Nothing she could do about those. She stepped backwards and sat on the edge of the tub, unsure of what to do next. The man turned around and grabbed her by the shoulders, and, before she could think about what was happening, he lifted her and set her down so that she was sitting inside the tub. He was gentle with her, but Nikki winced as she leaned back against the porcelain. She tried to take a breath to clear her head, but her lungs shuddered in protest. Now that she was sitting still, all the pains that she had been powering though swept over her body, and her vision started to dim at the edges. She squinted at her feet and noticed that the man had already pulled the boot off of her uninjured leg and was slowly working the other one off her foot while holding her ankle in his hand. He was trying not to hurt her too much, she realized. Her mind wandered back to the kitten as her vision got even fuzzier, and the man had to tap her knee to get her attention again. She met his eyes as he pointed to her waistband and tugged lightly at her sweatpants. He wanted her to take off her pants? She furrowed her eyebrows at him, and he set his lips into a thin line while pointing to the muddy stains in the maroon fabric. They were too dirty and shouldn't brush against her wound after it was cleaned. They had to come off. She knew this, but she didn't want to do it. She looked away from him and stared at the wall, ignoring his request. He smacked the outside of the tub with the flat of his hand and her gaze jerked back to his. They glared at each other. He wrinkled his nose and Nikki tasted the memory of a stick between her teeth. She knew the pants were coming off one way or another.

"Fine," she huffed out, and pushed the sweats as low as she could manage before he slipped them off her feet. He turned on the faucet while she sat there shivering in her underwear. He held her ankle and guided her leg under the water. Dirt and blood sluiced off her skin and circled around the drain. She didn't want to look at what he was doing to the hole in her leg too closely, so she locked her eyes onto the side of his face while he worked. He had washed off all of the blood and grime, and she could see the skin around one of his eyes was swollen and purple. His sideburns were bold. She respected that. He looked very calm for a man who had been stabbed and shot with an arrow recently. She didn't know whether that should make her feel confident or frightened.

Eventually the water from the faucet warmed until it was hot, and the room began to fill with steam. By that time he was done wrapping up her leg, and she pouted a little when he turned off the water.

"No time for a spa treatment, huh?" she asked as he dabbed iodine at the cuts on her hands and her face. He didn't answer. When he was done, he reached down and started to grab her around the ribs, but she used her elbows to knock his hands away. His eyes narrowed at her face and then swept down her body until they rested on her hips and the purple bruises there. She saw a spasm jump along his jaw.

"Come here," she gestured at him impatiently, and he leaned forward again. She held on to the tops of his shoulders and he wrapped his hands around her upper arms, lifting her up and out of the tub. As soon as she was balanced on her good leg, he let go of her arm with one hand and grabbed the bottom of her shirt, yanking it up to her chest.

"Hey!" She yelled and started to swat his hands away from her before gripping onto the sink as she nearly toppled over. The shirt slipped back down over her battered skin, but he had already seen the damage.

His hands cut through the air in a gesture she couldn't interpret. She shrugged and his frown deepened as he reached to the mirror and smudged a word into its foggy surface.

WHO

"Oh," was all she could say as she looked from the mirror to him. The crease between his brows was very deep. He tapped his finger on the glass again, punctuating the word with an emphatic rat-a-tat-tat. She adjusted her balance and reached with one finger to trace through the fog.

WOLF + 1

He nodded and circled one of his enormous hands around her arm to steady her. She nodded back, and they hobbled together out of the bathroom. He released her slowly as he walked to the sofa and lifted the cushions to reveal the top of a fold away bed. The metal frame creaked as he pulled it out and the narrow mattress flopped into place. Nikki limped her way over to what looked to be a closet door. When she opened it, she saw a few flannel shirts on the hangers, and sheets, blankets and towels on the top shelf. After a painful attempt, she found that she couldn't lift her arms above her head, but before she could turn around to ask for help she was engulfed in the man's shadow as he stood at her back and grabbed the linens from above her. As he returned to the bed, she unzipped her hoodie and traded it for one of the oversized flannel shirts. The hem fell just above her knees and she had to roll the sleeves several times to free her hands. She took a second shirt before closing the door. When she turned around the man was unfolding a blanket. She tossed the flannel onto the bed. He nodded and pulled the shirt over his head, and then sat on the far edge of the mattress and took off his boots. She sat down as well, and slowly hoisted her legs up as she leaned back and let her head fall onto a musty pillow. The man let out a deep sigh as he did the same. They lay side by side, staring at the ceiling.

"What a day," Nikki said to no one in particular.

The man reached over and patted her arm, then turned on his side and fell asleep.

Nikki was restless. She wanted to move around and get herself comfortable, but the springs of the fold away bed poked into her aching ribs no matter which way she turned. After a few minutes of squirming ineffectually she resigned herself to a night of discomfort and just tried to ignore the pain. That's when her problems really began.

Ray was dead and there was no way Nikki could look at that fact without admitting it was sort of her fault. Maybe more than sort of. _Why didn't he think to bring the money? Oh, Ray. _That was why they had belonged together. He was hopeless without her. Ray was the first man she'd met who had needed her. More than that, he had adored her. He would have licked the bottom of her shoe if she had asked him to, and thanked her for it. How could she stop herself from loving a man who did everything she asked and treated her like a goddamn princess? Nikki had never believed that a man would ever go down on his knees and ask her to marry him. She had been thrown out with the trash too many times. But Ray had knelt, and with a beautiful ring to boot. Just like a fairy tale. _Except for the hooker wig_. _And the sex tape_.

Nikki knew she was guilty of a lot of things, but she wasn't the one who slit Ray's throat. She would never forget that, and neither would Emmitt. She would set things right, if_ right_ meant getting revenge on the people who had killed her man. It felt right to her, but maybe she wasn't such a good person. She turned her head and watched the man sleeping next to her. He probably wasn't such a good person, either. With that comforting thought Nikki drifted off to sleep in the early morning light, and her dreams were bright and terrible.


	3. Random Harvest

3 – Random Harvest

Nikki was pulled into reluctant consciousness by a strange sensation. At first she thought that the bed was shaking, but then she realized it was the man. She pushed herself up onto her side to look down at him. His eyes and his mouth were half open and his face was wet. She wiped her sleeve over his forehead and then pressed her hand flat against his skin. He was burning up.

"Aw, jeez, _please_ don't have tetanus," she moaned. She sat there for a minute not knowing what to do and watching him shudder. The light coming in the windows was bright, but she rejected the idea of going out to find help almost as soon as she thought of it. She was barely functioning. She would get them caught and then they would certainly both end up in prison if they weren't killed by assassins first. She'd just have to hope that he could pull through whatever this was and sweat it out of his system. She swung her legs off the bed, limped over to the kitchen, and filled a glass with water.

"Hey, mister," she said before remembering for the umpteenth time that he could not hear her. She sat down on his side of the bed where she shook his shoulder and patted his face. His eyes opened wider, but the man still didn't seem to see her at all. She hooked one of her arms behind his neck and hauled him up as far as she could manage, and then pressed the edge of the glass against his mouth. Both of his hands came up and trapped hers against the glass as he steadied it and gulped the water down. Nikki thought this was an encouraging sign, so when he was finished she went back and filled him another glass and repeated the process. When he was done, she brought the glass back to the kitchen sink and then made her way over to the closet. There were a few towels on the shelf that she made herself reach for despite the pain, and she took the remaining flannel shirts off of their hangers for good measure. On her way back to the bed she grabbed their coats off of the table, too. She dropped her bundle on the mattress, and then went to work covering the man with as many layers of fabric as possible - the towels and then the shirts, and their coats on top of it all. She hoped it was enough. She climbed back into bed and watched him with worry churning in her gut. He had curled away from her onto his side, but she could see that he was still shuddering. She moved herself forward until her arms and legs pressed against his back, hoping that the warmth of her body would help his muscles relax. His shaking continued, and she inched closer and closer to him, eventually wrapping one of her arms around his chest and curling the other up over his head. Finally, she lifted herself up and onto his back so that her entire upper body was draped over his. She shook along with him for a while, but eventually the tremors stopped, and then she was gently rising and falling, rocked by his steady breath.

"That's better," she murmured into his shoulder. She thought that she should move back to her side of the bed, but she was so tired, and finally so comfortable, that she decided to just stay where she was.

When she woke up again she was alone and shivering in the dark. There was nothing in the bed but her and a pile of shirts, towels, and blankets. Her coat was draped over her legs, but the leather fringe was gone. She slowly pulled herself up and sat at the edge of the mattress to look around. No sign of anyone, no movement anywhere. Nikki reminded herself that her companion wasn't exactly a noisy guy. She shrugged on her coat and waited some more, but there was nothing. He had left her. Or maybe he had tried to go for help and someone had gotten him and he was dead somewhere out there in the dark. The cops would be coming for her soon, or worse, the goons. _The wolf_. As she sat there trying to think of what she should do and remember where she had left her sweatpants, she heard the patio stairs creak. _They're here. It's over._ Nikki panicked. She pushed herself off the bed and hobbled to the kitchen counter where she flung open the top drawer and grabbed a knife_._ She may have been just a battered girl in nothing but her panties and a faux-fur coat, but she wasn't going down without a fight.

The door opened and Nikki charged. She recognized the man in the same instant he grabbed her wrist and twisted it until the knife fell away.

"Hey," she yelled, "let go, you're hurting me!" He stopped twisting, but didn't release her wrist as he looked wildly around the dark cabin. He held his other fist in front of her face and raised each finger one by one, counting.

"No one," she replied angrily, "just you!" She shook her head violently until he let her go. He moved quickly to turn on the light as she stumbled back from him. His movements seemed controlled, but he was pale and his hair was damp. When he looked at her again she pointed at him and waved her arms in a circle.

"Where were you? You scared me to death!" He rolled his eyes and reached into his pockets, emptying handfuls of energy bars, bandages, ointments, and cash onto the kitchen table. The last thing to emerge was an orange pill bottle that he held out to her with the label up. _Antibiotics_. "Did you just…rob a pharmacy?" He made a strange face and moved his hands in a gesture that meant nothing to her. She shook her head again. The man went to kneel by the door and picked up the knife she had dropped. He walked back and placed it on the table, and she realized for the first time that it was a butter knife.

Nikki felt her knees give out, and she sagged into one of the chairs, resting her elbows on the table and letting her face fall into her hands. She was sweating and exhausted, and still shivering underneath her coat. There was a tapping noise, and when she looked up again the man was holding out an antibiotic tablet and a glass of water. She took them without question. After she had gulped it down, the man pointed at her and then at the bed. A small, uncertain fear tugged at her then – a reflexive internal warning of danger. She looked up at the man towering over her and hesitated. She had no idea who he was or what he had done to get arrested. He was certainly a killer, _that_ much she had figured out, and killers generally weren't safe people to be around. As she wavered, the memory of the bus and the way his body had lunged between her and the knife rose in her mind, and she decided. She nodded and lurched out of the chair and into the bed where she curled into a ball, tucking her legs up inside of her coat. She heard the man moving around some before the light clicked off and the other side of the mattress dipped under his weight.

_You're safe_, Nikki assured herself, and fell asleep.

They spent the rest of the night and the next day in bed. Sometimes they were curled into tight, shivering balls, and sometimes their splayed limbs knocked against each other with feverish thrashing as their bodies fought through the infection. When evening fell again they started to wake and rouse themselves. They took turns cleaning up in the bath and exchanged their sweaty flannel shirts for fresh ones. They made use of the man's mysterious plunder and changed the bandages on their wounds, and then sat at the kitchen table and slowly ate their way through all of the energy bars. As they sat there chewing quietly, Nikki tried to think of the last time she had eaten, and an image of a face flashed behind her eyes. _Coconut cream pie_. And just like that, she found that she desperately wanted to talk to someone. She put down her half eaten bar and started looking around the cabin for some kind of paper. The best thing she found was a small stack of fishing magazines piled on a table in the corner. She grabbed the first one, tried not to look too closely at the cover picture of a happy retiree on a boat holding up a giant swordfish as if it were his bride, and returned to the kitchen where the man was finishing his last energy bar and eyeing the one that Nikki had set down. She waved her hand, and when he looked at her she held up the magazine and mimicked writing on it. He nodded and started shuffling though the kitchen drawers, finally emerging with a pen in hand as she moved back towards him. They sat next to each other at the table and she opened the magazine between them.

_Hello_, he wrote in the margin of the first page. She laughed a little bit, and he handed her the pen. She wasn't sure where she should begin with him, so her reply was more of an incoherent list.

_Hello. Sorry. Thank you. Are you OK?_

The shiny paper didn't take the ink very well, so some of their words were colorless indentations, but they were clear enough as they began to pass the pen back and forth.

_Is there somewhere else you need to be, _she asked.

_Prison. No thanks, _was his reply.

_You don't have to stay. You know they were just after me. This isn't your fight. _He was quick to respond.

_They tried to kill me, chased me through the woods all day, and then tried to kill me again. I want to go after them. _She paused before writing again.

_Are you sure? It's going to be dangerous. _He smirked at her before taking back the pen.

_OK. _She held out her hand, but he kept writing. _Is there somewhere __you__ need to be?_ She looked up at him and furrowed her brows in confusion. He reached over and tapped the fourth finger of her left hand. They both looked down at Ray's ring. Nikki felt her mouth pull into an ugly shape before she got it under control. She took the pen from his hand, but had to think for a few moments before she wrote again.

_He's dead. His brother works for the people who attacked me. I think the brother killed him._ As soon as she finished the sentence she went back and scratched out the word _think_, then above it wrote _know_.This time it was the man's brow that creased into a question as he read. When he looked up at her again, he reached out one arm to her side so that his fingers rested lightly against her bruised ribs for a moment, then took the pen from her. He underlined _attacked me_ and above it wrote: _Same? 2X?_ Nikki nodded and wrote _Set up_ next to his question. They looked at each other again, and his face was dark and cold. Nikki thought she might have imagined it, but it seemed to her that a current of understanding passed between them, a shared experience of loss and anger and loneliness that could never be articulated, and she was sad for him, then.

She was about to put the pen down when she remembered something.

_I'm Nikki. _When he read it, his face shifted into something resembling a smile. She held out a hand to him, and he clasped it. She waited for him to write his name next to hers, but he did not. She inched the magazine towards his hands, but he shook his head at her, and something closed behind his eyes. Nikki tried not to feel stung, and reasoned with herself that he didn't owe her anything. Not even that.

"Ok, cowboy," she said, and shut the magazine. She slid the last piece of energy bar along the table to him, anyway.

That night they prepared to leave the cabin. He reset the bed into the couch, and she put all of the linens back in the closet. They dressed in their own clothes, which, unfortunately, neither of them had had the foresight to wash and let dry. The plundered first aid kit and the toolbox - which had also lost some of its contents to the man's pockets - went back under the sink. The only other things they decided to take with them were the magazine and the pen. There was no way the owners of the cabin would not notice that someone had been there, but hopefully they would chalk up the minor thefts and damage to misbehaving teenagers. Once everything was relatively in order and they had established a plan, they sat on the couch and dozed until the sky started to lighten. Then they left the cabin, wedging the broken door closed as best they could, and started their trek back to the car. Before setting out, the man assured her that he had found a gas station that they would be able to get to before running out of fuel. When he had written this down, Nikki wondered just how far he had ventured during his looting expedition and almost pressed him for a full description of what he had done that night, but decided to just leave it. He didn't seem inclined to discuss things that were already done.

The walk to the car felt very different from the walk away from it. What had seemed like an enormous distance the other night shortened considerably now that she was out of the haze of exhaustion, and the woods were almost pretty in the soft blue light. The man was moving steadily but slow, and she was still limping to keep the weight off of her injured leg. The VW was right where they had left it. Nothing was different except for a new layer of snow over the top. The man handed her the key and began to wipe off the windshield with his sleeve. Nikki peered into the back seat looking for an ice scraper, and when she didn't see one she walked to the back of the car to pop the trunk. A hinge creaked as she lifted it open, and a moment later Nikki shrieked and stumbled backwards with her hands over her mouth. A wolf's head stared back at her. It was the Russian goon's pelt. She whirled around, expecting him to leap out of the woods at any moment. The man noticed her frantic movement and was next to her in two hurried strides. When he saw what had frightened her, he put his back against hers and she heard his knuckles pop as his hands curled into fists. They stood like that for a few moments, waiting for something to leap out at them, but nothing came. Finally they turned to each other and exchanged worried shrugs. Nikki grabbed the thing by its ears with every intention of throwing it to the ground and maybe running over it as they drove away, but then she had a second thought, and looked up at the man.

"Do you think we could get any money for something like this?"


	4. Sullivan's Travels

**4 - Sullivan's Travels**

They decided to head southwest to Sioux Falls. Their first visit was to a pawn shop at the edge of town where the man behind the counter gave Nikki $175 for the wolf skin. She had haggled him up from $100 and thought she could get more, but once he started eyeing her ring she became anxious to leave. Their next stop was a thrift store where Nikki was able to exchange her fur coat for a pair of jeans and a fleece-lined jacket. She bought the man a fleece as well. She suspected that the leather fringe could not be mended, and it made him pretty conspicuous. Once they were dressed, they found a diner and settled themselves into a booth. Nikki had to stop herself from ordering everything on the menu, and settled instead for two breakfast platters. As they waited for their meals to arrive, the man constantly swept his gaze back and forth, and Nikki noticed he had placed himself so that he had a view of the door. The cold certainty that she would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life settled in her mind then. The life that she had known and the future she had hoped for were both snuffed out of existence. Now her world consisted only of survival and revenge. That realization tightened around her heart and made her lightheaded with grief. A moment later the waitress set a plate of hot food in front of her. _Survival, revenge, and breakfast_, she thought. _Amen_. Before she had time to pick up her fork, the man started tucking into his food with unrestrained gusto. As he hunched over the table, Nikki saw for a moment the lanky, awkward boy he must have been twenty years ago, back when she was a snaggle-toothed beanpole. The thought made her want to laugh, and she felt the painful tightness in her chest ease into something more comfortable. Something she could live with.

After eating they found a self-service carwash where they scrubbed their blood out of the inside of the VW. Although she was still nervous about giving it up, the man persuaded her that they should probably not cruise around in a green Beetle for much longer. She eventually conceded, but they also agreed to move on before stealing a car. They decided to avoid the city and stick to the highway as they continued south. Nikki felt herself growing hungry again after an hour of driving and had just started checking for restaurant signs at the exits when something caught her eye. She swerved at the last moment into an off-ramp and the man lurched in his seat. She glanced over and saw him clutching the door handle for balance and glaring at her reproachfully.

"Sorry," she said, "but look," and gestured with her chin. He huffed air out of his nose in what she interpreted as a noise of disbelief as she drove them towards the red and yellow sign above a bowling alley. She parked in the corner of the lot and then turned in her seat to look at him.

"What do you think?" All he gave her was a funny look. "Well, I think it's fate," she said, and reached for the magazine to tell him her plan.

An hour later they were on the highway again, having exchanged cars with an extremely young and inebriated kid who should not have been driving anyway, and who was currently sleeping it off in the back of the green VW parked in a dark corner of the lot.

"Bless his hipster heart. The lure of the vintage was too strong," Nikki smiled to herself. He had been an easy mark, already more than halfway drunk when she had found him amongst a rowdy group of undergrads getting wasted on cheap beer and drowning their sorrows in liquid nacho cheese at the bowling alley.

"Hey, can any of you fellas give me a jump? The battery in my '73 Beetle is dead," was all the bait she had needed to lure him away from the group. "Aw thanks! Let me buy you a drink first," she had said as he stumbled over to her in his skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses, messy curls sticking out from under his beanie. Forty minutes, several drinks, and a few knee touches later he was in the parking lot admiring the car. "Do you really think she's pretty," Nikki had cooed in his ear, "because you can have her." He had grinned at her, confused and excited. "The car actually works fine, but I need a favor." She dangled the key in front of his face and held out her palm. "Trade?"

"Oh_ fuck_ yeah," he shouted, and reached into his pocket. "Mine is that Chevy Cruze over there," he said, pointing, and then managed a bewildered "whoah- what?" as the man appeared out of a nearby shadow and wrapped his arm around the boy's neck in a choke hold. He kicked out once and his rubber toed Chuck struck ineffectually against a tire with a dull thud before he passed out. Nikki grabbed the key that he dropped and gathered his belongings out of the Chevy while the man maneuvered the unconscious body into the back seat of the VW and grabbed his leather coat. She dumped the kid's things in the front seat, deposited the key under the mat, and patted the roof of the Beetle as she shut the door.

"Good luck, kid," she said before following the man to their new car. "You probably won't remember any of this, but at least you'll have a sweet ride when you wake up."

They found a motel as close to the middle of nowhere as they could manage. It took a few more days of sleep and antibiotics before they were up to doing anything, and even then they started slow. Their most pressing concern was finding enough money to live on, but they were weakened by injury and illness, and needed to get back in shape. Ironically, the safest way to do this turned out to be long walks in the woods. He started teaching her sign language as they walked, and Nikki took to ASL very well. Years of playing bridge and remembering bank account numbers had turned her mind into a steel trap. It just took time to build her vocabulary. Sometimes when they got back to the hotel they would turn on the daytime soaps and translate the dialogue into sign language, although this sometimes lead to confusion between them. He suspected that Nikki was making up dramatic plot twists just to tease him, and she had to work hard not to gloat when she was proved right.

Nikki wanted to know more about him - who he was, where he came from, what he had been doing when they met - and she would have asked him if she thought that he would tell her anything. But she knew he wouldn't, so she didn't. She told him everything. The whole story spilled out of her in fits and starts as her hands struggled to keep up with her new language. She told him all about herself and how she had met Ray and what he had done to buy her a ring, and what she had done to protect the two of them.

"Was I supposed to feel bad? He was a junkie who murdered an old man and pulled a gun in my apartment. Did he deserve to get his head smashed by an AC unit? I don't know. But that's what I did." She paused, waiting for his reaction.

"What did it look like?"

And so it went between them.

Two weeks into their stay at the motel, Nikki woke in the small hours of the night with a start. She was confused for a moment, and then realized she had been roused by the raised voices on the other side of the wall. She groaned in annoyance and pulled the blankets over her head, but the shouting got louder and someone started crying. A strand of worry started to twist in her gut as she listened. Something was wrong next door. She wished that she hadn't woken up, or that she was far away from here. _Please, just stop_ she silently begged. It didn't stop. Nikki scrunched her eyes closed. _It's none of my business. We can't get involved._ Someone screamed and her eyes flew open as she sat up. Then there was another voice, this one from her memory: _Job sat on his dung heap covered in boils._ She had just picked up the handset off the phone to call the front desk when a loud thud shook the connecting wall. The man started up out of his bed and turned on the lamp. His face was pale with sleep and his eyes barely open, but he was on his feet in a moment. Nikki put her fingers on the telephone hook and met his eyes.

"I need to call the cops," she mouthed deliberately, and tilted her head towards the room next door. He only paused for a second before nodding as she dialed.

"Get ready to go," he signed, and pulled on his jeans. Another scream pierced the wall and Nikki felt herself flinch. The man glanced up from putting on his boots, and she watched his face change as he looked at her.

"Get ready to go," he repeated, and then strode out the door.

"9-1-1, what is your emergency," came a voice through the phone at her ear, and she realized that she didn't have time to panic. She gave the dispatcher the name and location of the motel and was in the middle of reporting a violent altercation when two gunshots rang out.

"_Fuck_," she yelled, slamming the handset into the cradle. She launched herself off the bed and shoved her feet into her boots. She didn't bother getting dressed, instead she tore around the room, throwing all of their accumulated clothes and belongings on top of her fleece jacket and then pulling the corners together in a makeshift bag that she clutched to her chest as she ran out of the door and into the parking lot. She unlocked the Chevy with the fob and threw the bundle into the backseat where its contents promptly spilled all over the floor. She stood next to the car with her heart racing wildly, and for a moment she was tempted to just leave, so much so that when her feet started moving she thought that she was running away, and was almost surprised to realize she was running back towards the room. Before she had time to come up with a plan, her body slammed head first into something solid. She bounced back a step and saw that she had collided with the man who was pulling a woman behind him by her arm.

"Are you alright? What happened?" Her voice sounded high and strained in her own ears. The man used his free arm to turn her around and push her back towards their own room. The three of them bustled inside.

"The cops are coming," she signed to him. He nodded.

"Tell her to stay here with the door locked until they arrive." Nikki turned and saw that the woman was a nicely dressed middle-aged lady holding her shoulder and looking at them in a daze.

"Lock the door after we leave and don't open it for anyone but the cops. They're on their way, ok?"

"Ok," the woman replied, her eyes wide and teary. Nikki felt the man's hand on her shoulder pulling her towards the door, but she resisted for a moment. She wanted to beg the woman not to tell anyone about them, or maybe even make some sort of threat that she'd better keep her mouth shut, but the woman was trembling and scared and she just couldn't do it. Instead, she let him pull her outside without another word. As the woman shut the door behind them, Nikki thought she heard a "thank you."

Nikki kept the car right at the speed limit. She wanted to go faster, but they couldn't afford to get pulled over. There was no plan, and she didn't even know which highway they were on, but she didn't feel far enough away from the sirens she'd heard when they had pulled away from the motel. She was aware that she was gripping the steering wheel too tightly, but didn't realized that she was shaking until the man turned up the heat and pointed the air vents directly at her. She tried to relax, but there was too much adrenaline coursing through her body. When the shaking didn't stop, the man reached over and settled his left hand flat against the back of her neck. They passed several exits before she felt the hand tighten as they approached a service plaza. She took the off-ramp and pulled up to a pump at the gas station. She killed the engine, and then met the man's eyes for the first time since before he had left the motel room.

"Is anyone dead," she asked.

"No. You should get dressed," he replied before getting out of the car and standing with his back against the window. Nikki climbed awkwardly into the back seat and fished through the mess on the floor until she found her jeans and fleece and wriggled into them. She got out on the other side and stared at him over the roof of the car. He turned when she shut the door, and she was equal parts annoyed and grateful that he looked so damn calm.

"What do we do now," she asked him.

"We keep going," was his only answer.

Meanwhile, a woman in a police station was telling the cops how her husband had come home in a panic earlier that day and made her pack for an unplanned road trip. They had driven north all afternoon and into the night until she'd begged him to stop so that he wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel and kill somebody. Once they were in the motel room she had held and kissed him and pleaded with him to tell her what was happening. He told her that his business had actually gone under six months ago, and that he had been lying about going to the office every day, that he had taken loans from people he shouldn't have and couldn't pay them back. When she'd started crying, he had taken out a gun that he had bought years ago for protection and told her that he was sorry but he could end it all, that they wouldn't have to suffer. She had tried to run past him, but he had tackled her against the wall and begged her not to leave him. She knew that she should try to keep him calm, but she couldn't stop herself from screaming for help. The door had burst open and her husband fired off two wild shots that lodged in the furniture. A man had swept in and wrestled the gun out of her husband's hand before knocking him down and slamming his head against the ground. That was where her memory went blank - from the trauma, she supposed. She didn't remember going to the other room and locking the door. It must have been some kind of survival instinct. She didn't know who the man was at all. She hadn't even gotten a good look at him. "It all happened so fast," she told them, and burst into tears. An officer placed a box of tissues close to her and said softly, "Ok, let's move on."


	5. Sweet Smell of Success

5 - Sweet Smell of Success

He thought it would be wiser to buy all the hardware they needed rather than steal. They might get away with it, but if something went wrong they would need to contend with even more people coming after them, and they sure as hell didn't need the deck stacked against them any more than it already was. He wanted time to think about the best way to acquire weapons as honestly as possible, given their circumstances. Meanwhile, they needed something to live on, and their employment options were severely limited. They started spending their nights in hole in wall bars. Nikki picked pockets while he kept an eye out. Neither of them relished stealing from people already down on their luck, so they only took from those they decided were bad people – the ones who tried to grab her, or who tried to make fun of him – but the pickings were slim. As they sat in their room counting dollars after a particularly disappointing night, Nikki had an idea.

"We need to go somewhere nice if we're going to find the rich s-l-e-a-z-e-b-a-g-s." She had to spell the last word with her fingers. One corner of his mouth pulled to the side. Nikki did not recognize this as an expression of agreement, but she didn't let it go. A minute later she landed on the idea of a strip club.

"I don't like it," he told her, "I think we need to stay low."

"But it will be perfect," she argued, "the place will be full of distracted guys with cash on them, they'll be too embarrassed to report once they notice they've been robbed, and they probably won't even think twice about feeling a woman's hand in their pocket if I slip up."

"There will be cameras."

"We'll only go once, and their cameras won't be that good."

"I don't know."

"Come on! It's a great idea." There was a long pause before he answered.

"If you want to. Ok."

If Nikki had been paying attention to the man's face, she would have seen the same expression he wore on their first day together when she had tried to break their chain by smashing it with a rock: the glint of frustration giving way to resignation as he decided to let her find out for herself that she was wrong and he was right. But Nikki hadn't seen it then, and she didn't see it now.

...

The music in the club was loud, so loud she could feel it thrumming in her chest like a second heartbeat that made her own feel erratic. The cloud of evaporating deodorant and after-shave didn't quite cover the locker room smell. Nikki had to work hard to look like she was enjoying herself. She was dressed in a tight crop top and mini skirt that she had found in a thrift store along with some definitely pre-worn stilettos. The man could not be convinced to wear anything other than his usual black jacket and jeans. She draped herself on his arm as they entered, hoping that everyone's eyes would glance over him and stay on her. She needn't have worried as there was not much eye contact being made at all inside the club, at least not between patrons. Most eyes were on the women in various stages of undress who were dancing on small stages scattered throughout the room and slinking their way between the tables where raucous groups of men hollered and whistled at them. As long as Nikki kept moving it seemed that no one took much notice of her, but she had expected the room to be more crowded. She had to be very quick, and very careful. There was indeed an abundance of loose cash to be had from the pockets of men who didn't notice where her hands went as long as she smiled while squeezing past their tables. Her outfit didn't exactly allow for covert wads of cash, so she periodically brushed by her companion at the bar to slip her earnings into his palm or his pocket. Things went well for a while, or at least Nikki thought they were going well. They had been in the club for less than an hour when Nikki happened to look across the room and saw huge men in suits closing in on her friend. She felt her stomach drop with realization. He stood out too much, his posture, his expression – he wasn't even looking at any of the dancers, for Pete's sake. No one cared about one more scary-looking dude in a crappy bar, but at a place like this…It had been a mistake. This was the perfect spot for her to work, but not for him. She had gotten greedy at the prospect of easy cash, and it had made her stupid. When she looked back to the bar, he was gone. Her head snapped back and forth until she spotted him being escorted by two impossibly burly men towards a door at the back corner of the club.

"Shit," she muttered as she started to make her way towards them. She stopped abruptly when she spotted another suited man in the opposite corner watching her.

"_Shit!_" She had to hurry, but she was afraid that if she ran she would be snatched up by security. She tried to look like an offended girlfriend stomping away from an argument as she wobbled towards the exit on her cheap heels. She went straight to the door without stopping to pick up her coat. As soon as she was outside and past the bouncer, she grabbed the shoes off of her feet and broke into a run towards the back of the building, skidding in the slush as she turned the corner. Removed from the pounding music, her head felt like it was underwater and a rushing sound like the ocean filled her ears. The alleyway was empty except for two dancers standing in an open doorway clutching parkas around their necks and smoking. She picked up speed again and barreled past them into the building. She paused just inside the doorway to look around. There were girls lounging in a dressing room on her right, and a door with a metal plaque with the word MANAGER on her left. She went left to the door, and as soon as she heard a man's voice emanating from inside she sped up, grabbed the handle, and threw her weight against it. She tumbled into a truly hideous room and couldn't help but gawk for a moment at the two different shades of red striped paint on the walls punctuated by vulgar photos of nude women in faux-gilt frames before fully taking in the scene before her. Her friend was standing between the two enormous goons in front of a desk with a fourth man in a suit seated on the other side. On top of the desk was a messy pile of cash - she assumed the same that she had recently pilfered.

"Ah, this must be your sticky-fingered girlfriend," the seated man said. Nikki supposed he was the manager at the same time she noticed that the carpet was a third shade of red. She wasn't sure which of these revelations was the one that made her physically cringe. The manager's hair and his teeth were shiny and his tie was much too wide for his face. _Tasteless_, she decided.

"Please, join us," he added. Nikki softly shut the door behind her. The manager started to speak again. "I assume you will be more talkative than this one. I was telling him that there is no need to get the cops involved in this indiscretion as long as we work something out. We haven't made much headway yet, but my friends here can be pursua–" He stopped talking when one of Nikki's stilettos hit him square in the forehead. As soon as it had left her hand, she'd thrown herself on the back of the closest goon. He yelled as she reached around and raked her fingernails across his face. From her side she heard the distinctive sound of a fist hitting a nose and was sure that the accompanying yell of pain was from the other goon. The manager stood up and grabbed something from the inside of his jacket. She tried to look over at her friend to see how he was faring, but she felt the hands of the man she had tackled reach around and grab at her clothes. She had almost gotten her legs wrapped around his middle to secure herself when he pulled her hard over his shoulder. Her body was thrown up into the air as he flipped her so that she landed, hard, face–up on the desk with the wind knocked out of her. For a moment everything was still, then the manager's hand whipped towards her face and she heard a loud cracking noise as her head snapped to the side and white stars exploded behind her eyes. She knew she needed to keep fighting, but now she just seemed to be floating. She tried to reel herself back in and focus, but the stars had turned into bright red and purple dots that obscured everything else. The only thing that came back to her was sound – heavy thuds of fists against flesh and bodies hitting flat surfaces. The desk lurched under her a few times and she scrabbled her useless hands across its surface until a shadow darkened her blurry vision and something captured her wrists, bringing them together at the center of her chest. A man's weight leaned over, trapping her against the desk.

_Oh God, not this, too. Please, no._ She tried to struggle, but her limbs responded too slowly and the man pressed harder against her. She started sucking ragged breaths into her lungs to scream, but then she felt a hand cup the side of her face and fingers pulled open the lids of one of her eyes.

"Cowboy," she wheezed, "is that you?" The hand slid from her eye to her cheek and she blinked a few times as the spots of color finally dissipated. His face, grimacing and bloody, came into focus as it hovered above hers. He was bruised and angry, but he was still standing and still holding on to her. Nikki realized she could stop fighting, just for a minute. She started to float again. The warmth of his hand left her face and she felt a steely grip on her ribs. The room around her turned upside down, and then everything went black.

She came to in a moving car with her cheek pressed against the cold glass of the passenger-side window. Pain lanced through her head and she lurched forward. She planted her hands on the dash and breathed heavily through her nose, holding down the retch that was making its way up her throat. She stayed that way until she was sure that she wouldn't vomit, and then slowly let herself fall back into the seat. Her gaze fell on the disheveled man driving the car. He glanced over at her for a moment and scowled. She looked down at herself. Her coat and shoes were gone, and her feet were brown with mud that had splattered up her legs during her run down the alley. She swallowed down another retch, then leaned forward and stuck her hands as close to the man's face as she could reach.

"Where's the money? Did you get it?" He shook his head.

"What? Why?" He couldn't answer her while he was driving, but she carried on. "You just left it? How could you do that? We need that money!"

He reached out with one arm and pushed her hands down. She stopped signing and started yelling.

"_What is wrong with you? How could you be so stupid?_" All of a sudden her hands were balled into fists and she was hitting the dash, hitting the seat, hitting the window, hitting him. She was still too weak to strike with any real force, but her blows were landing and he had to keep one hand off the wheel to fend her off. When she didn't let up, he pulled the car onto the shoulder and threw it into park. He turned in his seat, grabbed both of her wrists, and shoved her back so that he could lock her gaze as he signed. His eyes were bright and his gestures were so vehement they seemed to fill up the interior of the car.

"Stop it!"

"Idiot! We need that money!"

"No we don't! We will get money some other way. It was too much trouble. You got hurt!"

"I don't believe this shit!"

"What is wrong with you? Calm down!"

"_Fuck you_," she yelled, and unlatched her door. She had just pushed it open when his hand shot out past her, grabbed the handle, and slammed it closed. She clutched his sleeve in both of her hands with the intention of shoving him away, but instead her head dropped forward as uncontrollable sobs wracked her body. The arm that she was holding stayed in place for a moment, and then slowly wrapped around her back and pulled her close so that she could hide her tears in his shoulder. She cried over his bloodied face and her own stupid stubbornness, and mostly over Ray, who had died on the floor of his basement apartment after she had sent him out alone for their stolen money. Once she cried herself out, she sat back and sniffed noisily, feeling small and embarrassed.

"I fucked up. Sorry."

"It happens."

"Are those men dead?"

"No. Just unconscious."

"Good. But you hurt them."

"Yes, a lot."

"Thank you. Let's go home."


	6. In a Lonely Place

6 - In a Lonely Place

They stood side by side in the motel bathroom, bleeding. Just like old times. One of his eyes was swollen, his bottom lip was cut, and the skin over his knuckles was torn up, all of which seemed to be mildly irritating to him. Nikki, on the other hand, almost retched again when she got a look at herself in the mirror. The skin above her right ear was split open and a stream of blood had spilled over the side of her face and dripped down her neck and chest. She turned away from her reflection, shuddering, and stepped into the shower. Behind the curtain she stripped and stood under the hot water, letting it rinse off the blood from her face and the mud from her feet. When she stepped out she was a little surprised to find the man still standing there, holding a towel for her. His eyes stayed on the floor as she wrapped it around herself. After tucking the towel closed at her chest she reached over to rifle through the first aid supplies the man had already set out on the counter, but she felt confused and clumsy. As she tried to unscrew the cap of the Neosporin she realized that her hands were shaking and felt relieved when the man took the tube away from her. She closed her eyes as he placed his hand on her chin to keep her still. He cleaned the wound on her head before taping it shut, and she heard him exhale a long, tired breath as his hands dropped away from her. She opened her eyes and he slowly came into focus. The anger had mostly dissipated from his face, but his mouth was pressed into a thin line and his eyes shied away from hers.

"Thank you," she said, and tried to smile. He nodded, and stepped around her to the door. As he brushed past her, Nikki thought about leaning in and wrapping her arms around his chest for reasons she didn't examine, but he was gone before she could move. She noticed her pajamas folded on the bathroom counter and used the towel to dry her hair before slipping them on and stepping out to the bedroom.

He told her that she shouldn't fall asleep with a concussion, so they both sat up in her bed with their backs against the headboard, staring into the blue glow of the TV. Whenever she started to nod off, he reached over and flicked her arm hard with his middle finger. Tiring of this, Nikki decided to sign along with the dialogue of an old movie to keep herself awake. This perked her up eventually, but after a while of not needing to wake her, the man's head tipped back and he fell asleep.

"Hypocrite," she signed.

Nikki sat up and thought for a long time. She knew that she couldn't stay with him. She was bad luck. Or maybe she was just bad. Either way, she would more than likely get him killed, and she just didn't think she could stand to have that on her account. He had been nothing but good to her, and all she did was get him into trouble. To be fair, he had known that since their first hour together and didn't seem particularly bothered by it. He had never left her side, and she didn't think he was planning to ever leave. For the second time that night her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears – these ones quiet – and she started talking out loud.

"Look, I don't know why you are still here. Maybe you just like having people around. Maybe you're lonely. That makes sense, what with the kind of life I gather you've been leading, but I don't think we're supposed to stay together. I've been thinking about that man at the bowling alley, the one who gave us the car. He said something that made me think that each of us is on a road, and that road is ours whether we like it or not, and its going to take us where we're supposed to be, whether we like _that_ or not. Anyway, this man said that you are on a better path now, and he said it like you were at the beginning of that path and he wasn't sure where it was going to go. But he did know exactly where my path leads and what I'm supposed to do. So, you see, our roads can't be the same because yours is still being made and mine is set. That's why I've got to leave, not because I want to, but because I have to follow my road and you have to stay on yours, and I won't be the one who knocks you off that better path. I just won't." She looked down at him. In his sleep, he had slumped in the bed so that his cheek pressed against her shoulder and the hand he had been using to flick her draped over her arm. The weight of his body on her side was heavy and comfortable. In that moment, a fondness for him rushed over her so strongly it felt like actual pain in her chest. She reached across her body to circle her free hand around the arm lying over hers, and let her own cheek rest on the top of his head. Not for the first time, Nikki wondered what his name was, and whether or not he knew that he snored.

The next day he taught her how to fence a car. It seemed there was no end to his criminal skills or shady connections. Nikki was suitably impressed. This new method of earning money was more time consuming than picking pockets, but also more lucrative. Once they started accumulating more money than they were spending just to get by, they sat down and wrote out a budget for the tools and weapons they would need and distributed their cash into piles accordingly. It took a few weeks to cover all the necessities, but eventually they had enough to buy their supplies and then some. They moved into a nicer hotel and sometimes ventured into restaurants instead of getting fast food.

One morning the man handed her a stack of cash out of the blue. When she raised her eyebrows at him he gestured vaguely at the few clothing items hanging in the closet. _Shopping_. Nikki realized she was smiling with something resembling joy.

"Are you coming with?" He cringed and shook his head. "Well if I'm going alone I will definitely waste a lot of this money on makeup, and you can't scold me about it afterwards." He rolled his eyes and shoved her gently towards the door.

She returned a few hours later with take out and shopping bags. He grabbed the food out of her hands as she dumped her clothes onto the bed and began rifling through her acquisitions excitedly. She was smiling as she waved her hand to get his attention away from the sandwich he was already tucking into.

"I found you something. I know it's a different color than the one you used to have, but otherwise it's almost the same." She held up a black leather jacket with long fringe along the back and sleeve. The man froze, and Nikki felt her smile falter. She suddenly felt unsure of herself, but carried on. "I know the brown suited your coloring, but I feel like black is appropriate given our current circumstances and the journey we're on right now. I got one too, only without the fringe. That retro stuff is more your thing. See?" She tossed his jacket to him and when he caught it out of the air she held up her own and tried to smile at him again. The man wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the jacket in his hands as he sat on the edge of his bed. Nikki felt herself deflating as she sat down across from him. She couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling, not at all, so she sat still and waited. Finally, he looked up at her, and Nikki thought that something in his face had softened. His eyes were bright as they held her gaze, as if he was trying to tell her something without using his hands. She felt her brows drawing together into a questioning look, and he leaned forward slightly, reached out and placed one hand on top of her knee. Something in the pressure of his touch made his expression clear to her.

"You're welcome," she responded, and his grip on her leg gently tightened. "Don't go all mushy on me now, cowboy," she added, but she rested her own hand on top of his.

It was several more weeks before they had a solid plan and enough weapons to return to Eden Prairie. Nikki had tried to ask the man one more time if he was sure that he wanted to get himself involved, but he had ignored her question, and she was quietly grateful for that. They settled in, stayed low, and kept eyes on Varga and his men. In the meantime, Nikki took it upon herself to start haunting Emmitt. It wasn't going to be enough to kill him. She needed him to be scared first. She was quite proud of her creative thinking on that front, but it was the man who came up with the idea for Varga's truck. He needed her to figure out the details, but the broad strokes of it were his, and she had learned to trust his criminal instincts. She had learned to trust him.

Sometimes at night Nikki would lie awake and stare at the ceiling while the man slept. Her gut would tighten as she thought about the part of the plan that she had not told her partner - the one where she would leave him. If she did it right it could go smoothly. She would make sure he had enough money to keep him going for a long time, and then she would take off before he could really think about it. Best to make it quick. She wasn't going to say goodbye and give him any reason to worry or follow her. She would take her road, and he would stay on his. And that was how it had to be.


	7. The Big Heat

**7 - The Big Heat**

Five Years Earlier

He woke thinking that he was still in the snowstorm. Everything was white, his vision was clouded, and he was so, so cold. It took a while for the haze of drugs smothering his brain to clear enough for him to remember what had happened and to recognize that he was in a hospital. He didn't know how the job had turned out, and there was no one there to tell him. For the first time in a long time, he was by himself. The only people who came into his room were skittish-looking doctors and the wary cops hovering in his peripheral. No one even looked him in the eyes until a woman shuffled through the door with her IV stand and tried to talk to him. It took him a few moments to recognize her as the cop from the insurance office. More or less the last person he expected to shoot him, but here they were. She seemed like the type who wanted to be helpful, so he asked her for the white board and she obliged. Part of him didn't want to ask, too scared of the answer, but he had to know.

_Partner_?

"Dead."

He hadn't really thought about this moment. Hadn't prepared at all. He had assumed they would die on the job, but he figured they were going to go out together, and even if they didn't, it had always seemed more likely that he would be the one to go first. He was easier to surprise, after all. He gazed into the woman's face. She looked kind and sad and hurt, but all he could think about was the fact that he should have shot her first. He didn't blame her for doing her job, but she had gotten in the way. Malvo had been in his sights when she had taken him down. He stared at her and wondered if she knew what she had done. She kept talking, asking questions, trying to understand. As if there was an explanation for all this. He almost felt sorry for her.

"I mean what's the point, you know? Here you are, and your friend is dead, and you're going to spend the rest of you life in jail. And for what?"

He turned away from her then, bitter and miserable, wishing that he had bled out in the snow before being left alone.

2011

The moment Nikki left him he felt a phantom tug of the chain at his wrist and turned, almost falling into to step behind her as she walked out of the warehouse. Instead, he let her go alone. Nikki had planned their attack on Varga so perfectly - accounted for every moment, considered every possible scenario - that he didn't have any real reason to think that her plan for Emmitt wouldn't work equally well. In that moment, he hadn't seen the problem: it was too personal. For Nikki it had always been about Ray and what had been taken from her. For him it was about seeing a job through to the end, and that job was neutralizing the threat that was hunting them. That was the choice he had made on the bus when he decided to save both their lives instead of just his own. She had been chained to him eitherby the will of fate or God or an unconcerned corrections officer. They could be the same thing for all he knew. What mattered was the fact that he had been bound to her, she needed help, and he could help her. And then, for the first time in a long time, he was not alone. He had a partner and a job, and he was going to do right by both.

These were the things he thought about as he slouched in a bar booth with a view of the TV behind the counter. He knew he should have already left town, but he couldn't bring himself to go. He had a bad feeling. So he drank and watched the screen until he saw the moving banner under the newscaster's face: "Highway shootout leaves State Trooper and one woman dead." He knew it was Nikki even before the footage of cops at the scene flashed up and he saw her truck parked behind the State vehicle. No word of a prominent local businessman or unfortunate bystander, but plenty of room between the two cars, enough for a third. The Trooper must have interrupted her. She should have backed down, but probably panicked when she felt Emmitt slipping out of her grasp. _Damn it, woman_. She had always lashed out when she was panicked, striking like a snake at anything that could hurt her. So determined to get the first bite that she never thought about what she was biting. _Damn you, Nikki_. He slammed his glass on the table and felt it shatter under his hand. He was probably making a scene. He needed to go, but he wasn't going to leave her without knowing.

There wasn't a lot of security at the morgue, just one cop looking through files in a car parked outside. He slipped in the first door and looked around the ante room. He seemed to be alone, but there was no way of knowing if there was anyone behind the closed door of the exam room until he saw for himself. He decided that he would just have to take his chances with any morticians he might encounter and kept going. The second door was locked, but easy to jimmy. He entered and closed it gently behind him. There were two sheet-covered bodies stretched out on tables in the middle of the room. The one closer to him looked to be the smaller, so he reached out and pulled down the top of the sheet. As he revealed Nikki's face, he had to work to keep his own from contorting. The hole between her eyes told him it had been quick, but dead was dead. She was gone. Despite his efforts at control, his eyes blurred with tears that quickly spilled over his cheeks. He hadn't planned for this moment, either. He supposed he should have known better, but he had wanted to keep her safe, or at least help her to get away. Instead she had gotten herself killed, and he didn't know if he was wretched from anger or sorrow. Maybe both. He replaced the sheet over her face and rested his hand on her stomach as he tried to think clearly again.

A movement flashed in the periphery of his vision and he turned around. The cop from the car was standing inside the door, talking to him with one hand resting over the gun at her hip.

"I don't hear you, I'm deaf," he signed at her, interrupting, hoping that would throw her off enough to distract her. It worked, but only for a moment. Before he could get around her, the cop stepped in his path and withdrew a notebook and pen from her pockets. As she was writing, he realized that he needed to get back in the habit of carrying a pencil and paper on him. He hadn't needed it with Nikki around. The cop handed the notepad over to him. He took it and read: _How do you know Nikki Swango_?

He wrote below her words.

_Old friend. _They started passing the notebook back and forth.

_Why are you here?_

_No one else_

The cop nodded. Her face had that same open expression of pity as the cop who had shot him years ago – not pity for who he was, but for what he had lost. Some people just had hearts like that. He looked at her nametag and paused. Gloria Burgle. Nikki had liked this woman. He wrote again.

_I will pay for the burial_

The cop raised her eyebrows a bit. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a card and showed him the typed message: _We should talk. Gloria Burgle 555-0122_. When he looked back at her, she started speaking again.

"I think you can read lips. Does this look familiar?"

He met her eyes and shrugged. Her mouth tightened. He wrote again on the pad

_You can help?_

He watched the blood drain from her face as she read it.

"What," she asked, her lips pale and eyes wide. He wrote once more and handed her back the notepad.

_You can get a nice casket, flowers, headstone for Nikki?_

After she had read it and looked up again, he placed an envelope thick with cash on top of the pad in her hands. The cop paused for a long moment, thinking, weighing. She pocketed the card, and then wrote along the top of the envelope.

_FOR NIKKI_

He nodded at her in thanks, but she scowled at him.

"Look, I don't know who you are and I don't really want to know, but things will go different if I ever see you again. Got it?"

"I understand," he signed in reply. The cop jerked her head towards the door. He turned away from her and looked back down at the table, finding Nikki's hand under the sheet. He curled his fingers around hers for a moment, and then walked away.

Five Years Later

He kept himself busy. Varga's people may have been difficult to track online or through paperwork, but it wasn't all that hard when you used your eyes. They were men who lived dangerous lives, so it wasn't really unusual for some of them to turn up dead once in a while. A car accident here, an overdose there, that sort of thing. After a few years the deaths got a little more violent and a little harder to explain. There was an uptick in drownings, beatings, stabbings - things that were maybe deals gone wrong, but maybe weren't. One man was found on the floor of an office bathroom bleeding out from a cut on his neck, apparently from a shard of the mirror that had been shattered over the sink. A week after that, two men were discovered frozen to death in the woods, each of them chained to a tree. People started to talk. The underlings got a little twitchy. One morning the eight men who were camped out at the house of one of Varga's new reluctant business partners were found in a pile at the end of the driveway next to the trash bins, each of them with a bullet between the eyes. People started to jump ship after that. Not all at once, but enough. While the cops and the IRS circled Varga from above, he snipped away at the safety net of hired hands below. These things took time.

He had to wait for Emmitt, too. At first he wasn't keen on letting Nikki's body go into the ground while Emmitt was still above it, but it wouldn't do to put the man out of his misery. It wasn't enough to take his life away while he thought his life was dust. So he watched and waited until the time was right.

He felt that five years was long enough for a man to turn his life around and start enjoying things again, so he finally went back to Eden Prairie. Sure enough, Emmitt had regained his family and a home and lots of pretty things. Things Nikki had wanted and never got. Now Emmitt wouldn't have them either. It was easy to get inside the house, and then he had to wait a little longer, just until his target was alone.

He knows it is time when Emmitt stands up from the family table. He creeps into the kitchen. Emmitt is staring at the pictures on his fridge, no doubt thinking about how _blessed_ he is. The man standing behind him is thinking of Nikki, and of the job.

_Head in a bag. That's the message._

Everybody pays for the things they do, one way or another. No one is above justice, not really. Some people think they are, especially men like Emmitt, but they're wrong. Once you decide to play on a team like Varga's, there is always someone like Wrench to even the score, and there is only one way for the game to end.

The phantom weight of a chain tugs at his wrist, and he pulls the trigger.


End file.
